Robert bonnie, former Agriculture Department undersecretary for Natural Resources. Thank you for joining us this morning. Forest service; correct . Guest yes, undersecretary for agencies t at two under the u. S. Forest service and conservation service. Ost what do you make of what you have been seeing out in california recently . Uest its terribly tragic, weve obviously lost a lot of lives, a lot of homes and resources, as well. But its part of a larger trend that weve seen over the last bigger fires, more catastrophic and deadly ires and that is very concerning and it means investments at the federal level are critically important, both firefighting aspect and to do more work, educe threat of catastrophic fire in the first place. Host headline in u. S. A. Today the nightmare, the worse may be over, perhaps they corner. Rned a it doesnt mean they dont have a lot of work to do and people of struggling, but in terms the money spent, what are the on the federalds government in places like california today . About 20 s look back years, 20 years ago the u. S. Forest service, Largest Agency in the government, federal government, used to spend onesixth of the on firefighting. This year it will probably spend not more budge oat firefighting, both in preparing for fire and what you in all the major fires you this year. Not on private land, National Forest land. Most expense out there is paid by the state, that doesnt mean there arent substantial firefighter, aircraft, hot shot teams, you name it out there. Work nothing Close Partnership the the state, the state is lead on the firefighting side, lead on recovery, but the ederal government and state government, along with local municipal Fire Departments will of thegether in the wake fire. Host phone number on the bottom of the screen for our guests. Robert bonnie, talking about california and other wildfires, money involved on the federal government end. For dealing with and well get to your calls. 2027488001, republicans. Is your , 2027488000 number. Independent, 2027488002. Directly impacted by 2027488003. Call mr. Bonnie, more facts and igures we can put on the screen. Federal firefighting activity in 2. 4 billion for 50,000 fires ion, covering 8. 5 million acres. Think a lot of people maybe dont understand that number, 50,000 fires going on, 4300 personnel are engaged, 33 helicopters, 14 air use. Ers in there is a lot going on there, his information comes from the Agriculture Department. How does the spending get what is the process for doing that, so that cumove forward . Firefighting and the Forest Service budget, the Forest Service is not the only spends money on firefighting, interior, bureau management, other bureaus spend money on fire, as well. Budget ar the agencies certain amount based on the verage firefighting expenditures over the last 10 years. The problem is over time that sorage has been going up and those agencies, particularly the Forest Service, having to devote money to ore firefighting, taking larger and larger share of the budget and of the r necessary case Forest Service, they run out of money. They have to what is called money from other accounts, take from forest anagement or restoration account, recreation, other things we need to do on National Money taken ving away to fight fires, that includes activities that will educe the threat of catastrophic fires. Peter to ly robbing pay paul. Host do you see budgetary future . In the guest a lot of discussion in congress about this. Hen i was in the obama administration, there was a ipartisan effort with the president , republicans and democrats on the hill to address this. Years, three now that have been focused on this, change the able to way fire is budgeted for. What needs to happen, we need to fires like natural disasters. They are treated as normal the se that come out of normal expense of the agency. Its gotten too big, it is other things. We need to create a Disaster Fund, both for the u. S. Forest service, as well as the department of interior agencies so that in bad years, they can the funds. Then, maintain the existing budget to be able to invest in prevention. Host where can folks read this opinion piece you wrote with mark ray, essor, ipartisan solution to the wildfire problem. Guest u. S. A. Today, mark ray had the same position i had bush administration, again, signalling there is broad support for how we fix this, we to move forward. Host from allen first in brooklyn, new york, democratic for robert bonnie. Good morning. Caller good morning. Looking at the News Headlines of week, it seems were live nothing two realities. Cutting back on obama era regulation on carbon time were the reading about record floods and storms and fires in texas and and da and puerto rico california. As a member of the forest you feel constrained not to make public connections the needs of your agency increase withing Climate Change and the seemingly ignore the rt to connection to Climate Change by other branches of your own government . The im no longer with department of agriculture. No longer in the government, im actually at duke university, but continue to work on these issues. And our fire season have grown over the last three decades. Fire seasons are longer, our ires are bigger, more catastrophic and Climate Change is clearly playing a role in that. Change isnt the only challenge were facing. Decades, it was sort of a mantra in the u. S. The t service, but in Scientific Community and elsewhere fire was a bad thing, controlled. O be that mythology is long gone. Were dealing with the legacy of it. We put out small fires for so ong and created fuel buildups in wild lands and forest and climate that puts us at creates serious challenges. The third piece that i think is sort of rtant is just management of the lands, dealing but also the , fact we got houses in places we didnt have houses. Hen i was in the administration, we had a 250,000 mexico, it n new never made the headlines because no one lived there. What you are seeing in now is people t and lives being put at risk here, so youve got this threelegged stool of climate management and fuel buildup over time and then urban and what we call interface, which is houses in the wild areas creating challenges. And driving up the budget. Joanne calling for robert. Good morning. Caller good morning. Isten, i live in nevada and close to california, we have the fires. From the california now do you attribute any of this envireos that took grazing off the land and cutting the trees down . Sierras and l the see dead standing trees, what do they think is going to happen . Hen i left talascoga weeks ago and my brother was missing in the fires, okay, but we talked waiting to as fire happen, nobody cleans up their land out there. Happens every year, im tired of their smoke. Lands, get ur thenviros out of it, use common sense. Dean heller did a report, from nevada, did a report on how much in e category save wildfires. Why arent these things used . On y brown just falls back global warming, at what the democrats normally do and thats shame. Clean up your land. Thank you. Bonnie. Bert guest im glad your brother is well. That Land Management matters a lot, not only the management of federal lands, but private and state lands, as well. And one of the things we obama rated on in the administration and really a bipartisan way, increase the amount of Forest Restoration doing, work with the Timber Industry, with onservation groups with local communitys to increase the amount of work were doing in the woods, to restore more conditions and to reintroduce fire in places we could o so safely so we reduce those fuel loads. Ou point out grazing has an Important Role to play and grazing can be a tool that is forest manage h toment reduce fuel loads. O, there have been challenges related to environmental the ation of management on National Forest and federal lands. Traesz that through collaborative work, by pulling people together. There is clearly more work we do. To and i think one of the challenges with the budget ituation is that were investing so much money in just Fire Fighting that were not the to invest in prevention, the restoration work, working with local fuel, to s to reduce be more prepared in the fire, the budget matter necessary this debate. Host chairman of the house and resources committee, you know, he was on the Newsmaker Program the past weekend and need to improve management of the Forest Service, here is a look. Service themselves has a goal of trying to refine and fix their forest, manage the 25 a year. They get to 2 and not all of hat is simply because they are incompetent, there are other factors, that is what were can g to relieve so they manage 25 a year, so when the fires hit, they are not fires. Ophic i dont know about the other one, but i do know mismanagement are causing devastation. Host robert bonnie, your thoughts . No question. Look, one issue, there is a lot of actually Fertile Ground in the opportunities s to do more management, to look projects that e both benefit local communities, grazers, Forest Industry and other folks while also ecological ng improvement, water shed, protecting forest, better forest help, better wildlife habitat. Work together collaboratively, correct, there is more work to do there. The challenge is that if we Additional Resources to do that work, the Forest Service is really hamstrung, it takes people, it takes foresters, it takes rofessionals to go sxout plan largescale efforts. We have to solve the budget problem. Focus on the s environmental litigation or the dont fix there and the budget problem, were not going to make any progress at all. Host judy calling from lincoln, nebraska. Good morning, judy. Caller good morning. How are you, sir . Host doing well. To somebody to talk live. Host were glad to talk to you live, as well. Would you like to say or ask, judy . Caller the fires is another thing. I got a friend living there and hes clear on the northern part area and rancisco stuff like that. What are they doing about it . On an, they are blaming it the state. Our president is insane, the man devils advocate. He dont do anything for anybody. All about money and all about him. In hollywood got fired in whatever. A or and stuff and things and he is a scum bag. Right. All we get the point, caller. Lets hear from robert bonnie. Well, i think obviously a lot there, but i think the one that you gotsay is serviceted career civil in the Forest Service at the arertment of interior, they working hand in hand with irefighters on the ground in california california. We fight fires seamlessly at level, state and local everybody working together and i terms of fire response, we do a really good job. Ur challenge in doing things ahead of the fire that can reduce the threat. That is where budget issues come in, thinking about large scale Forest Restoration comes in, it where we put out homes on the landscape so we tonight put people and house way, those are s things we need to think about ahead of the fire so we can get problem. This host from twitter, prater wants to know what will happen when starts falling on the charred land, can you explain that . Guest this is actually a real problem. A lot of the fires, you obviously see the devastation today, but now you have removed the vegetation from the land and if you get a heavy rain, heavy snow and then snow the water pringtime, runs off immediately, there is ot vegetation to slow it down and to take up some of the water. So this creates real challenges. Forest service, cal fire, which is the california fire Resources National conservation service, other agencies gallon out in the wake even when the ground is still warm to begin to treat the acres so we get less and fewer threats of mud slides and those types of things. Postfire, when the flames its charred landscape, were not done yet, a lot more done. To be those things are expensive, they require people, that is why i budget ing back to the situation. That is why we need to solve the budget host i know it is supplemental bill, but congress is working through 36 billion in the senate this week, it might reach final vote this week. What piece of that goes toward the forest fire situation . Guest my understanding there will be several hundred Million Dollars in there that will help replenish the federal budgets when it comes to firefighting. As i said before, so often the agency has to take money from its other budget line items in order to pay for fire and typically the bills will replenish those things. What they dont do, solve the longterm problem, treat fire as a disaster, create a Disaster Fund where the agencies can tap on and dont have to rob other budget lines. Host there is something called forest act of 2017, want to get your take on that, here are some points. This act would provide extra firefighting money to from fema instead of coming from Forest Service, expedite review process for logging and controlled burns and wave environmental safe guards for management projects if endangered species are believed not to be affected. What else can you tell us . Guest as we were thinking about this during the obama administration, we recognize you need both to deal with the budget issue, you might also need to address ability to do larger scale restoration, Forest Restoration as i talked about. The challenge is with some of these this legislation goes too far. Weve demonstrated that you can build a middle, you can work at collaborative level with lots of stake holders, Forest Industry, environmental group, local communities and you can accomplish largescale restoration. We need to be careful that we dont reignite timber wars that affected federal Land Management, we need to solve the budget problem, we need to allow the agencies to draw on emergency funding, we can look at some ways that we can stream line projects so that we can get more work done. I worry that we go to far, and create conflict around our federal lands. My hope would be that congress can walk that line and find a way to do this that preserves the environmental laws, and the integrity of the environmental laws, while allowing more restoration, and selling the budget problem. Host california fires worsen air quality for survivors, washington times, officials suggest limiting time outdoors. California on the line, june lake, california, independent caller named lynn. Good morning. Caller hello. Host youre on the air. Caller hi. Yes, this is very interesting. I live in the forest in the interNational Forest and, you know, we have watched these Forest Service workers basically do nothing for many, many years. They were supposed to do a whole forest planning between our forest, sierra forest and sequoia, it was started in 2012, it is now 2017. There were meetings. I dont know what was completed. Agencyhed the federal spend hundreds of thousands of dollars basically on nothing. As a business owner, you know, its very frustrating to watch because you dont get to waste money in business. This gentleman is up there talking about once again, waiting for congress. We have bark beetle, dead trees everywhere and, you know, its so hard to understand why people cant go in there and harvest that timber. Especially now. Imagine the resources as far as needing new homes, you have huge, massive fires that cost billions of dollars, you have Forest Service sitting around and talking and have meetings and this whole person does in, does a planning process and six months later, theyre gone and a new person comes in, just like completely starting over. It is extremely frustrating and i can kind of tell that your guest is a little frustrated, too, because how long hes dealt with it and still waiting as billions and billions of dollars are being wasted with zero accountability. And i have a lot of ideas living in the forest all of my life, dealing with recreation and timber, watching these fires and theres so Many Solutions to the problems as the average person living in this area that once again were waiting for congress, waiting for the government to solve our problems. If you would just let the local people go to work, they dont want to destroy their lands, they want to protect their lands. The mountains are full of grass that grazing isnt allowed anymore, then the grass just burns. I mean, i dont know what the answer is, but i can tell you for absolute positive about the amount of money that is completely wasted by the government, sitting around and trying to plan and trying to get together with the foresters. Host lynn, thank you. A lot there, any response . Guest couple points. One, the effort you are talking about on the indian National Forest, alongnal with couple other National Forests is to develop a plan that has community buyin, you can get work done faster. So that is what the efforts, Planning Efforts are about so that we can do largescale restoration. A little bit, the big challenge, i know there is a lot of cynicism about government. One big challenge the Forest Service faces, it has 40 fewer foresters, 40 fewer planners, recreation, managers, all those folks on the nonfire side of the organization, fewer, 40 fewer employees there, and weve doubled the amount on the fire side of the organization. So there has been this steady creep of resources away from Forest Management, away from grazing management, recreation, all those things that matter a lot to the community you live in and were spending more and more and more dollars on fire every year. So part of the challenge that you see on the ground as someone surrounded by National Forest is that the Forest Service has fewer people to do the things that matter to your community. That is why the budget challenge is so important. Weve got to solve the budget challenge to be able to give the agency the resources it needs to work with the community so they can get things done. I think your point about the importance of working with local communities is really, really important. That is something i think the Forest Service and other agencies have taken to heart. There is clearly more we can do there, without budget resources, we wont be able to do it well. Host jim at twitter, how much fire is result of current Environmental Activism and earlier misguided environmentalism . Guest there is no question that we need to do more Forest Management and restoration that involves thinning to reduce the fuel levels. It also involves using prescribed fire, fire when there is no lives or houses in danger. And, you know, think back to the 1980s and 1990s and you have a spotted owl war in the west and litigation and confrontation around management of the National Forest. There is no question that is in some sense maybe agency maybe more defensive, but i think the agency has begun to come out of that and you see, we were able to treat more acres, produce more timber during the obama administration, there are opportunities to do more out there, to find ways to work with the Environmental Community and Conservation Community and Timber Industry and local community to get more work done, that collaborative approach is really important. Im actually quite optimistic we can work through this issue in terms of being able to work through environmental laws, planning and other things to get more work done. The fundamental challenge continues to be the budget. You dont solve the budge sxet solve the budget and give the agency resources, they wont be able to perform the way they need to. Host a couple more calls and then well wrap up. Ellen or eileen . Caller aline. I lived in maryland for 45 years and i was very active in Invasive Species removal, things like that. Those kind of new plans are making it harder to fight fires because theyre a lot more strong and things like that. But i think we do need to get the public more involved and maybe put smokey the bear to a different focus and understand what is going on with the fires and things like that. I think your previous caller maybe should get herself elected to head a committee and get people interested in living in the areas, have input and suggestions be known. So, there would be more buyin and people would be involved. Guest great comments there. One, on Invasive Species. Youre exactly right, these are species not native to the united states, we have a species in the which create burn, huge problems for fire safety, for wildlife, for grazers and so addressing and investing in restoration is going to be critically important to deal with the fire problem in a lot of places. So that Invasive Species challenge is a real one. Its changing the way fires burn, making them more catastrophic, and so an issue that really needs to be dealt with. Again, the way to deal with it is for communities to work together, to collaborate, to come up with largescale efforts, but in order to do that, we have to invest the dollars to get projects done. Host one more call, tony new castle, pennsylvania, you are on with robert bonnie. Caller good morning, gentlemen. Host hi, tony. Caller i guess the thing im calling about, to direct to address, i feel sorry for these people losing it is horrible. In pennsylvania, we dont have kind of these major disasters. I love it here. So anyway, but anyway, some of the houses were probably there 20, 30 years and strict built construction, i think they need to change some of these codes for building. Ive studied different housing, concrete and stuff like that, at least you wouldnt lose everything, especially in tornado areas and everything, you seem to keep building the same old stuff and its not going to last. I agree, you know, im in my 60s, my kids have a small family, seem like they dont want to do anything unless you have a machine to do it with. Seems people need to get out and get their hands dirty and stuff, so many prison people sitting there that, why cant we get them working or Something Like that . So that is my comment. Host thank you for calling. Final thought on preventing and dealing with wildfires. Guest great point on building codes, the nature of the fire threat has changed. There is the size of the fire, catastrophic nature of the fire, we have to think about changing building codes, things like metal roofs, clearing vegetation away from houses and these areas that are fire prone, that is going to be the difference between a house surviving or not. So, the way these fires advance, they get heavy winds and they throw embers, thousands and thousands of embers. If your house can withstand embers, it will still be standing after what can be a very catastrophic fire. In order to do that, we have to invest in changing building codes, we have to work with existing houses so they can be retrofitted. There is a lot we need to do that will take resources to do that. Host robert bonnie, former undersecretary Agriculture Department for Natural Resources from 20132017, currently at duke university. Thank you. Coming up on cspan, freedom of the press with the editors of the New York Times and the washington post. After that the president holds a News Conference for the Senate Majority leader mitch mcconnell. And later President Trumps a run agenda. S iran coming up tuesday morning, we all live in jefferson city, missouri for the next stop on the 50 capitals bus tour. Decision tot the turn over information to the president s voter commission. Then the future of the Affordable Care act President Trump supporter. Us, efforts to limit government surveillance. Cspanso watch washington journal, coat join the discussion. [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2017] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] we will live with the Senate Health committee on 10 00 a. M. On cspan3. Also on cspan. Org